Saturday, December 22, 2012

Media Continues To Push "Red Sox Stink And You Hate Them"

Some Texan wrote an article for mlb.com (which is "not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs" stating the following:

First, let's remember the mess the Boston Red Sox were in around the middle of last season. They were a bad baseball club. They were also an unhappy baseball team. [...]

Attitude? Let's just say the Red Sox were a tough club to love.

Middle of last season, eh? After 81 games, the Red Sox were above .500, one game out of a playoff spot, with the same guys who put up an incredible record the season before, right up to the tragic collapse of 9/11. They were three games off the pace of the team that would win the World Series. In fact, only three teams in all of baseball were more than three games ahead of them at the midpoint in 2012. So, despite the massive fall-apart that came later, it would be incorrect to say the Red Sox were a bad baseball club "around the middle of last season." (But hey, he's just going by what he heard, right?)

Point number two, the team was "unhappy." Fine, go ahead and think you know people's inner emotions. Be a stupid ass. And assume that you know the emotions of every player on the team, and that every one of them was unhappy. Moving on.

A tough club to love. Man, this guy must've listened to a lot of sports radio. And isn't that what makes a journalist, instead of actually paying attention and knowing what the hell is going on? Apparently it's hard to love the team you love. Ortiz? Horrible guy. Pedroia? I'm more a fan of lazy players who aren't good. Instead of running through the whole list, I'll just point out that even if you believe everything the radio told you, you still have to admit that there were only a few guys they brainwashed you into hating, as opposed to the whole club. I mean we all have guys we don't like. I'm not sure I've met anyone who likes Lackey. And what matters even more is that if the team had been 15 games in first place, nobody would have given a shit about the ratings-grabbing "attitude problems."

We've been over this before. I just thought it was kinda funny how some outsider basically came in and acted like he knows what was going on, but based it on the gossip and rumors that the public got from not actually paying attention, but to eating up everything the Internet tells them.

(Granted, this was a positive article about what a great job Cherington has done, but terrible job by that Texan throwing in the same-old same-old hype-driven lines.)

Speaking of Texans...check out Mike "I think he's gonna be on our team soon but who really knows" Napoli after his sister threw flour on his face.

I'm thinking that the 2013 team might do better than people are expecting. It's not like we have a field full of Darren Lewises (I totally loved that guy, cheered really hard for him all the time, but he didn't belong in the majors.) Maybe the media is trying to lower our expectations so we're happy to finish in 3rd place or something. Regardless, I'm not going into the season "expecting mediocrity" or whatever.